Millions of Snowflakes

September 1, 1998
PreS-A short rhyming text captures a little girl's delight as she romps with her dog in a wintry landscape. The heavily bundled youngster counts, touches, and tastes the snowflakes as they fall around her. Linda Brennan's Flannel Kisses and Lezlie Evans's Snow Dance (1997, both Houghton) both welcome winter in rhyme; their longer texts and larger formats lend themselves better to group sharing than Millions of Snowflakes. However, Siddals's book is perfect for small hands, and Sayles's evocative illustrations in pastels create winter surroundings made for playful exploration.-Kathy Piehl, Mankato State University, MN

November 1, 1998
Ages 2^-3. As in "Tell Me a Season" (1997), Siddals has written a book for preschoolers with minimal, but descriptive text--a kind of playful poem about the natural world. This one, which rhymes, is about anticipating a snowfall, and all the great things a child can do in the snow, such as catching snowflakes and making snow angels. Sayles uses a cool palette of pinks, blues, and lavenders. Her pastel paintings begin small, floating in white space ("one little snowflake falls on my nose"), but the pictures grow with each spread as the snow fall becomes heavier--" millions of snowflakes in my hair" --until they finally fill the page. It's as if she zoomed in on one snowflake and then pulled back, expanding the field of view to reveal the complete scene of a little girl frolicking with her dog. This is a book, like Uri Shulevitz's, "Snow" (1998) or Ulli Steltzer's black-and-white photo essay "Building an Igloo" (1995), that will get an enthusiastic reaction from active young children. ((Reviewed November 1, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)